Saturday, September 4, 2010
Labor Day Weekend Newsbites 2010
Anyone who doesn't love belting this song out is a sick, twisted, piece of...
(*CHUCKLE*)
Yeah, yeah... "Tell us how you REALLY feel, Bill..."
(*WINK*)
Hey, folks... surprisingly, I'm finding quite a few attention-worthy newsbites so far!
Check 'em out... I wouldn't emphasis this unless it were true!
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17 comments:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN0315109920100903
* HERE'S THE HEADLINE...
Taxpayers Likely to Lace Initial Loss on GM Initial Public Offering
* NOW THE SUBHEADER...
Treasury to Sell First Shares Below Break-Even
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
* FUNNY HOW THIS NEWS COMES OUT ON THE SATURDAY OF LABOR DAY WEEKEND, HUH?
(*SMIRK*)
The U.S. government is likely to take a loss on General Motors Co. in the first offering of the automaker's stock, six people familiar with preparations for the landmark IPO said.
Subsequent offerings of the government's holdings may be profitable depending on how investors trade the newly listed stock, the sources said, but the question of whether taxpayers are ultimately made whole on GM's $50 billion bailout could be left open for years.
It could take more than three years for the Treasury to sell down its remaining stake in GM after the IPO, one person said. That would push a final accounting into the next presidential term.
(*SMIRK*)
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2010/August/Islamization-of-Paris-a-Warning-to-the-West/
Friday in Paris, France.
A hidden camera shows streets blocked by huge crowds of Muslim worshippers and enforced by a private security force.
This is all illegal in France: the public worship, the blocked streets, and the private security. But the police have been ordered not to intervene.
An ordinary French citizen who has been watching the Islamization of Paris decided that the world needed to see what was happening to his city. He used a hidden camera to start posting videos on YouTube. His life has been threatened and so he uses the alias of "Maxime Lepante."
* BTW, GOOGLE THE TERM "LONDONSTAN" (OR "LONDONISTAN")
His camera shows that Muslims "are blocking the streets with barriers. They are praying on the ground. And the inhabitants of this district cannot leave their homes, nor go into their homes during those prayers."
"The Muslims taking over those streets do not have any authorization. They do not go to the police headquarters, so it's completely illegal," he says. The Muslims in the street have been granted unofficial rights that no Christian group is likely to get under France's Laicite', or secularism law. Lepante has observed cars coming from other parts of Paris, and he believes it is a weekly display of growing Muslim power. "They are coming there to show that they can take over some French streets to show that they can conquer a part of the French territory," he said.
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... YOU NEED TO BE AWARE OF THESE EUROPEAN EXAMPLES (FRANCE... UK... HOLLAND...)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704855104575470063205601090.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTWhatsNews
With the job market stuck in neutral, the Obama administration is moving toward using the revenue from expiring tax cuts for the wealthy to finance about $35 billion of tax cuts for small businesses and workers, administration and congressional officials said Friday.
* AS I'VE ALWAYS SAID, OUR SCREWED-UP TAX CODE IS WHAT ALLOWS GOVERNMENT TO PICK AND CHOOSE WINNERS AND LOSERS (FOR A PRICE... OFTEN FOR A BIG FAT CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION) WHICH SKEWS (AND SCREWS UP!) MARKETS AND CREATES CRONY CAPITALISM.
* YOU DON'T WANNA CALL OBAMA A SOCIALIST? FINE. THEN CALL HIM A CRONY CAPITALIST. THESE PEOPLE (YES... INCLUDING MANY RINOs) HAVE LONG BEEN AND CONTINUE TO DESTROY WHAT WAS ONCE THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH.
* FOLKS... WE NEED TO GO TO SOME SORT OF "PROGRESSIVE" FLAT TAX WITHOUT EXEMPTIONS THAT TREATS ALL INCOME THE SAME AND REFRAINS FROM EITHER REWARDING OR PUNISHING INCOME (OR SPENDING) CHOICES OF THE INDIVIDUAL.
* FOLKS... ALL THESE BASTARDS IN WASHINGTON (AND STATE CAPITALS) ARE DOING IS RE-ARRANGING THE DECK CHAIRS ON THE TITANIC!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704323704575461920164400014.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTWhatsNews
The Obama administration on Tuesday will launch its most ambitious effort at reducing mortgage balances for homeowners who owe more than their homes are worth.
* USING MY F--KING TAX DOLLARS!!! USING DEBT PUT ON MY TAXPAYER BACK AND YOURS! F--K THESE PEOPLE! IF THEY BOUGHT MORE HOUSE THAN THEY COULD AFFORD... F--K 'EM!
Officials say between 500,000 and 1.5 million so-called underwater loans could be modified through the program...
* "MODIFIED" MY F--KING ASS! SCREW THESE G-D-DAMNED PEOPLE!!!
Under the new "short refinance" program, banks and other creditors that write down mortgages to less than the value of the property can essentially hand off the reduced loan to the government. The process involves refinancing borrowers into loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration.
* MEANING THE RESPONSIBLE TAXPAYER GETS HOSED - AGAIN...!!!
[T]he government has set aside $14 billion previously earmarked for housing aid from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to cover losses.
* THAT'S OUR F--KING MONEY, PEOPLE...!!! THEY'RE GETTING READY TO PISS AWAY MORE OF OUR F--KING MONEY...!!!
The White House hopes to reach borrowers like Irene Gerloff, 62 years old, who was turned down for a loan modification because she can afford her payments. While she owes $292,000 on her two-bedroom condominium in La Habra, Calif., the property is probably worth less than $200,000.
* BUT IF SHE CAN AFFORD HER PAYMENTS WHAT'S THE FRIGG'N PROBLEM...?!?! LET HER PAY...!!! WHY SHOULD YOU AND I HAVE TO PONY UP TO SUBSIDIZE HER "UNDERWATER" MORTGAGE WHEN SHE CAN PAY HERSELF...?!?!
* FOLKS... HOW F--KING STUPID ARE YOU IF YOU CAN'T SEE HOW YOU'RE GETTING HOSED...?!?!
She is worried about what happens in five years, when her "interest-only" loan begins requiring much larger payments. "If things don't improve between now and 2015, I'm going to have to let this house go," said Ms. Gerloff, a secretary.
* WHO THE F--K CARES...?!?! WHY IS THIS MY F--KING PROBLEM...?!?! F--K GERLOFF...!!!
* FOLKS... BESIDES BAILING OUT FOLKS LIKE GERLOFF... YOU DO UNDERSTAND THAT MORE OF YOUR TAXPAYER MONEY (AND INVOLUNTARILY ASSUME DEBT VIA FEDERAL BORROWING YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE FOR) WILL BE GOING TO BAIL OUT THE BANKS... RIGHT...?!?!
(*LOOKING UNDER THE COUCH CUSHIONED FOR LOOSE CHANGE TO ADD TO MY AMMO BUDGET*) (*HEADING TO THE SPORTING GOODS SECTION OF WALMART*)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959704575454013855538920.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
At $578 million...the 24-acre Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex in mid-Wilshire [Los Angeles, CA] is the most expensive school ever constructed in U.S. history.
To put the price in context, this city's Staples sports and entertainment center cost $375 million.
To put it in a more important context, the school district is currently running a $640 million deficit and has had to lay off 3,000 teachers in the last two years.
(It also has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country and some of the worst test scores.)
Set to open Sept. 13, the school boasts an auditorium whose starry ceiling and garish entrance are modeled after the old Cocoanut Grove nightclub and a library whose round, vaulted ceilings and cavernous center resemble the ballroom [of the old Ambassador Hotel ] where Kennedy made his last speech. It also includes the original Cocoanut Grove canopy around which the rest of the school was built.
Talking benches - $54,000 - play a three-hour audio of the site's history. Murals and other public art cost $1.3 million. A minipark facing a bustling Wilshire Boulevard? $4.9 million.
The Kennedy complex is Exhibit A in the district's profligate 131-school building binge.
Exhibit B is the district's Visual and Performing Arts High School, which was originally budgeted at $70 million but was later upgraded into a sci-fi architectural masterpiece that cost $232 million..
Even more striking is Exhibit C, the Edward Roybal Learning Center in the Westlake area, which was budgeted at $110 million until costs skyrocketed midway through construction when contractors discovered underground methane gas and a fault line. Eventual cost: $377 million.
(The Roybal center now ranks in the bottom third of schools with similar demographics on state tests... But even though many Roybal kids can't read or do math, at least they have a dance studio with cushioned maple floors and a kitchen with a restaurant-quality pizza oven.)
http://www.nationalreview.com/critical-condition/245625/centrally-planning-market-failure-avik-roy
Earlier this year, Robert Book of the Heritage Foundation published an article that highlights a deeply troubling aspect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: the law gives the executive branch the power to wipe out the entire private health insurance industry.
It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? How could the government destroy an entire industry? Here’s how PPACA [aka: "ObamaCare"] gives the feds that power:
Forcing cost increases -- Obamacare gives HHS regulators the authority to define minimum benefit packages for all insurance plans: should plans be required to cover psychiatrists’ bills? Fertility treatments? Etc. As these benefits cost money, the more requirements that HHS piles on to the “minimum” package, the more expensive your basic insurance plan will be.
Forcing price increases -- The new law requires that insurers spend between 80% - 85% of the premiums they collect on health care, leaving 15% - 20% for fraud prevention, directly provided services like nurse hotlines, administrative costs, and certain taxes. (The definition of “health care” for this purpose is far more complicated than it sounds, and is at present the subject of hotly contested deliberations among state insurance commissioners.) Since it’s really hard for insurers to cut the 15% - 20%, they will be forced by the law to raise premiums to cover the 80% - 85%. Insurers that don’t meet these “medical loss ratio” targets, or MLRs, will be forced to send rebates to policyholders to cover the difference.
Taxing expensive health plans -- The “Cadillac tax” on health plans applies a 40%excise tax on plans with total premiums initially exceeding $8,500 for individuals and $23,000 for families. Because these dollar amounts are indexed to consumer inflation, not health-care inflation (which rises at a significantly faster rate), Towers Watson has estimated that more than 60% of large employers’ existing plans will qualify as Cadillac plans by 2018. The tax is paid by the insurer, who will then pass the extra costs onto beneficiaries, increasing premiums.
* NOTE: MY BELIEF IS THAT IT IS THE SYSTEM OF "EMPLOYER PROVIDED" (TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZED - INCLUDING SUBSIDIZATION BY INDIVIDUALS NOT COVERED BY "THE SYSTEM") THAT IS ITSELF THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION, TO OUR NATION'S HEALTH CARE ILLS.
[B]y requiring minimum benefits for all plans (which demagogic politicians always strive to expand), the law effectively sets a floor as to how cheap a health plan can be. Benefits cost money; the more benefits you require for the minimum plan, the higher the price of a minimum plan becomes.
[Heritage's Robert] Book rightly asks the obvious question: “What happens when the ‘floor’ is above the ‘ceiling’?” It’s pretty simple: private insurers will be unable to break even, and will go out of business, leading to predictable lamentations from the left that the “market has failed” and that it’s high time for a government-run single-payer system to come to the rescue.
* WE'RE IN TROUBLE, FOLKS...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261044/Slaughter-swans-As-carcasses-pile-crude-camps-built-river-banks-residents-frightened-visit-park-Peterborough.html
* JUST CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK AND READ THE STORY.
* FOLKS... CIVILIZATION AS WE RECOGNIZE IT IS IN TROUBLE.
* REGISTER FOR FIREARMS TRAINING. HOPE FOR THE BEST... PREPARE FOR THE WORST.
* OH... BTW... MY ADVICE TO THE LOCAL BRITS... TAKE THE LAW INTO YOUR OWN HANDS. IF GOVERNMENT WON'T PROTECT YOU... PROTECT YOURSELVES.
* BTW... THE ABOVE LINK CAME TO MY ATTENTION VIA http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/245437/august-diary-john-derbyshire I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU READ DERB'S "DIARY."
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/546134/201009031923/Why-One-School-Reform-After-Another-Fails.aspx
As 56 million children return to the nation's 133,000 elementary and secondary schools, the promise of "reform" is again in the air. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced $4 billion in "race to the top" grants to states whose proposals demonstrate, according to Duncan, "a bold commitment to education reform" and "creativity and innovation (that are) breathtaking."
What they really show is that few subjects inspire more intellectual dishonesty and political puffery than "school reform."
Since the 1960s, waves of "reform" haven't produced meaningful achievement gains.
The most reliable tests are given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The reading and math tests, graded on a 0-500 scale, measure 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds. In 1971, the initial year for the reading test, the average score for 17-year-olds was 285; in 2008, the average score was 286. The math test started in 1973, when 17-year-olds averaged 304; in 2008, the average was 306.
(*SIGH*)
(To be sure, some improvements have occurred in elementary schools. But what good are they if they're erased by high school?)
(There has also been a modest narrowing in the high-school achievement gaps among whites, blacks and Hispanics; unfortunately, the narrowing generally stopped in the late 1980s.)
Too few teachers? Not really. From 1970 to 2008, the student population increased 8% and the number of teachers 61%. The student-teacher ratio has fallen sharply, from 27-to-1 in 1955 to 15-to-1 in 2007.
(*SMIRK*)
Are teachers paid too little?...In 2008, the average teacher earned $53,230; two full-time teachers married to each other and making average pay would belong in the richest 20% of households (2008 qualifying income: $100,240).
* BTW... WE'RE TALKING EARNED OVER WHAT... 180-190 DAYS OUT OF 365? (*SHRUG*) HOW MANY DAYS A YEAR DO YOU WORK...??? (AND HOW MANY HOURS PER DAY DO YOU WORK...?!)
Maybe more preschool would help?
(*SMIRK*)
* WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...
[T]he share of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool has rocketed from 11% in 1965 to 53% in 2008.
[S]chool "reform" rhetoric is blissfully evasive. It is often an exercise in extravagant expectations. ... Now Duncan routinely urges "a great teacher" in every classroom. That would be about 3.7 million "great" teachers - a feat akin to having every college football team composed of all-Americans.
With this sort of intellectual rigor, what school "reform" promises is more disillusion.
(*SADLY NODDING*)
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/546137/201009031923/Why-We-Blink-In-Face-Of-Eco-Terror.aspx
An environmental activist inspired by Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" takes hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters. This isn't the latest example of eco-terrorism, just the latest to be ignored.
* WELL... NOT EXACTLY "IGNORED," BUT CERTAINLY UNDERPLAYED COMPARED TO WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE MEDIA REACTION HAD THE NUTCASE BEEN, SAY, A "TEA PARTIER."
(*SMIRK*)
President Obama recently accused Fox News host Glenn Beck of "stirring up" a "certain portion" of the American people with his "Restore Honor" rally. ... Yet those who say man is a plague upon the earth, ravaging its resources, exterminating its endangered species and heating it into oblivion are never accused of inciting anything when those who hear their words respond by marching into an office building to save the earth at gunpoint.
The gunman who entered the Discovery Channel headquarters was killed after he entered with a handgun and what were believed to be explosive devices, took three hostages and pointed his gun at one of them. He identified himself as James J. Lee and said, "I have a gun and I have a bomb. ... I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to go off."
In a rambling manifesto, Lee echoes the writings of President Obama's science adviser, John Holdren, railing against "disgusting human babies" and "parasitic infants" and insisting people should "disassemble civilization."
Court records show that Lee had been arrested on Feb. 21, 2008, on the sixth day of a protest at the Discovery building. Lee said at the time that he experienced an "awakening" when he watched former Vice President Al Gore's environmental documentary ''An Inconvenient Truth."
Eco-terror groups such as the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front have long advocated violence, including arson and bombings, to save the earth and critters on it from the plague known as mankind. From firebombing ski resorts to torching medical labs, these environmental terrorists have been very active. ELF's Web site at one point offered pointers on "Setting Fires With Electric Timers." The ALF posted commentary boasting that its "attacks on medical research continue today" and are aimed at producing "millions of dollars worth of damages and delays in the development of new treatments and cures."
Of course, no one will blame Al Gore for inciting hate and violence.
No one will worry about a vast left-wing conspiracy to save the planet at all costs or that James Lee's extremist views are almost identical to those of the president's science adviser.
(*SIGH*) (*FROWN*) (*NOD*)
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama-spending-Labor-Day-with-real-thugs-719584-102172594.html
To mark Labor Day 2010, President Obama will join hands with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in Milwaukee...[whose]...organizing record is a shameful reminder of the union movement's violent and corrupt foundations.
Meet Eddie York.
He was a workingman whose story will never scroll across Obama's teleprompter.
A nonunion contractor who operated heavy equipment, York was shot to death during a strike called by the United Mine Workers 17 years ago.
Workmates who tried to come to his rescue were beaten in an ensuing melee. The head of the UMW spearheading the wave of strikes at that time? Richard Trumka.
Responding to concerns about violence, he shrugged to the Virginian-Pilot in September 1993: "I'm saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you're likely to get burned." Incendiary rhetoric, anyone?
A federal jury convicted one of Trumka's UMW captains on conspiracy and weapons charges in York's death. According to the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, which tracks Big Labor abuse, Trumka's legal team quickly settled a $27 million wrongful death suit filed by York's widow just days after a judge admitted evidence in the criminal trial. An investigative report by Reader's Digest disclosed that Trumka "did not publicly discipline or reprimand a single striker present when York was killed. In fact, all eight were helped out financially by the local."
In Illinois, Trumka told UMW members to "kick the s**t out of every last" worker who crossed his picket lines, according to the Nashville (Ill.) News. And as the National Right to Work Foundation, the leading anti-forced unionism organization in the country, pointed out, other UMW coalfield strikes resulted in what one judge determined were "violent activities ... organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union."
Trumka washed off the figurative bloodstains and moved up the ranks. As AFL-CIO secretary, he notoriously refused to testify in a sordid 1999 embezzlement trial involving his labor boss brethren at the Teamsters Union. No surprise. Thugs of a feather: Trumka's violence-promoting record echoes the riotous Teamsters strikes dating back to the 1950s, when the union organized taxicab companies to target workers with gas bombs, bottles and fists.
And now, Trumka is spearheading a Democratic Party get-out-the-vote campaign by far-left groups - publicized in the revolutionary Marxist People's World - to "energize an army of tens of thousands who will return to their neighborhoods, churches, schools and voting booths to prevent a Republican takeover of Congress in November and begin building a new permanent coalition to fight for a progressive agenda."
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/mosque_was_steal_FpzwdRCdb5MdehzkDDWY3H
The original owners of the Ground Zero mosque site mysteriously spurned dozens of higher bids before selling the prime downtown real estate at a bargain-basement price.
The Pomerantz family, which had owned the building since the late 1960s and fielded offers after the patriarch died in 2006, rejected at least one bid that was nearly four times what prospective mosque builder Sharif El-Gamal eventually paid, The New York Post has learned.
New York developer Kevin Glodek was livid when he found out the building sold for a fraction of what he offered in 2007 - $18 million cash - and wondered whether money changed hands under the table, according to sources close to the deal.
Glodek and his partners wanted to build a 60-story condo tower with retail space on the Park Place site, had inked a purchase agreement and even had keys to the existing building, according to sources and documents obtained by The Post.
But Kukiko Mitani - whose late husband, Stephen Pomerantz, owned the property - and her brother-in-law, Melvin Pomerantz, a trustee to the estate, went silent at the end of 2007 and Glodek's deal disappeared, sources said.
* THANK GOD FOR THE TABLOIDS! FUNNY HOW THE NYT, WASHINGTON POST, et al SEEM TO HAVE "MISSED" THIS.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/us/05mortgage.html?ref=us
When the housing bubble burst, one of the culprits, economists agreed, was exotic mortgages, including those that required little or no money down.
* DUH!
But on a recent evening, Matthew and Hannah Middlebrooke stood in their new $115,000 three-bedroom ranch house here [in Milwaukee, WI], which Mr. Middlebrooke bought in June with just $1,000 down.
(*HEADACHE*)
Because he also received a grant to cover closing costs and insurance, the check he wrote at the closing was for 67 cents.
(*BLOOD PRESSURE SHOOTING THROUGH THE ROOF*)
“I thought I’d be stuck renting for years,” said Mr. Middlebrooke, 26, who earns $32,000 a year as a producer for a Christian television ministry.
Although home foreclosures are again expected to top two million this year, Fannie Mae, the lending giant that required a government takeover, is creeping back into the market for mortgages with no down payment.
* TALK ABOUT "BURYING THE LEAD!" IT TAKE THE TIMES WRITER TILL THE 5TH PARAGRAPH TO IDENTIFY FANNIE MAE AS THE CULPRIT!
Mr. Middlebrooke’s mortgage came from a new program called Affordable Advantage, available to first-time home buyers in four states and created in conjunction with the states’ housing finance agencies. The program is expected to stay small, said Janis Smith, a spokeswoman for Fannie Mae.
* HERE'S THE BOTTOM LINE FOLKS... (FOUND A FURTHER 13 PARAGRAPHS DOWN...) (*SMIRK*)
The agencies buy the loans from lenders, then sell them as securities to Fannie Mae. Because the government now owns 80% of Fannie Mae, taxpayers are on the hook if the loans go bad.
* GUNS AND AMMO - THE BEST INVESTMENT!
* NOT THAT I WOULD EVER CALL FOR VIOLENCE OR DEFEND ILLEGALITY... BUT WHAT'S THAT OLD SAYING... "SOMETIMES IT'S YOU OR THEM!"
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0910/Drudge_and_the_weekend_editors.html?showall
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor e-mails [MSM]:
Some of you may have seen...the Drudge Report headline that reads “American Taxpayers to Bailout Afghan Bank?”
That’s unequivocally NOT true.
* QUESTION: HOW CAN A QUESTION "NOT BE TRUE?" (OH... NEVERMIND...)
Here is a statement that Treasury has been giving out from Deputy Secretary Wolin: "This is an Afghan issue. They are taking immediate steps to ensure the stability of Kabul Bank and to protect the financial assets of the Afghan people. While we are providing technical assistance to the Afghan Government, no American taxpayer funds will be used to support Kabul Bank."
* WE'LL SEE!
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100906/D9I2DUV01.html
Vowing to find new ways to stimulate the sputtering economy, President Barack Obama will call for long-term investments in the nation's roads, railways and runways that would cost at least $50 billion.
Obama will also call for the creation of a permanent infrastructure bank that would focus on funding national and regional infrastructure projects.
* IF THE RAILROAD BUSINESS IS ECONOMICALLY VIABLE, SHOULDN'T IT BE ABLE TO FUND ITS OWN INVESTMENTS...???
* IF THE AIRLINES ARE RACKING UP PROFITS AND THE FEDS (AND LOCAL AIRPORT AUTHORITIES) ARE NICKELING AND DIMING US LEFT AND RIGHT WITH REGARD TO TAXES, FEES, AND SURCHARGES... SHOULDN'T THESE MONIES ALREADY BE PAYING FOR RUNWAY UPKEEP AND EXPANSION...???
* AS TO THE ROADS... YOU FOLKS ARE AWARE THAT THIS IS WHAT GASOLINE TAXES ARE SUPPOSED TO PAY FOR... RIGHT? (NOT TO MENTION TOLLS!)
Administration officials wouldn't say what the total cost of the infrastructure investments would be...
* NO. OF COURSE NOT. (*SMIRK*)
Obama made infrastructure investments a central part of the $814 billion stimulus Congress passed last year...
* YESSS...WE KNOW... THE "STIMULUS" THAT DIDN'T WORK WITH REGARD TO SPURRING EMPLOYMENT - OH, AND AS A "BONUS," FURTHER INDEBTED US AND OUR CHILDREN.
In a Labor Day interview on CBS'"Early Show," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the plan Obama was to unveil Monday would "put construction workers, welders, electricians back to work...
* I'M NOT A CONSTRUCTION WORKER; I'M NOT A WELDER; I'M NOT AN ELECTRICIAN... (*SIGH*)
In addition to Monday's announcement in Milwaukee, Obama will travel to Cleveland Wednesday to pitch a $100 billion proposal to increase and make permanent research and development tax credits for businesses, a White House official said.
* HEY... WHAT'S $100 MILLION BETWEEN FRIENDS, RIGHT?!
While the idea is popular in Congress...
(*SIGH*) (*GRITTING MY TEETH*)
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/04/why-do-ceos-make-so-much-money.html
One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage over their Croesus-like pay packages.
According to the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank based in Washington, the average S&P 500 CEO takes home 263 times what his cheapest laborer does. While CEO pay is indeed down from its pre-crisis highs in 2007, it’s still double what it was in the 1990s, and eight times the level in the 1950s.
* LIFE WAS PRETTY GOOD IN THE '50's FOR MOST AMERICANS...
Meanwhile, American workers are taking home less in real weekly wages than they did in the 1970s.
* AND THE '70's LARGELY SUCKED...
While the corporate world has certainly gotten more complex over the last 50 years, it’s hard to make the case that CEOs themselves have gotten any smarter, or that investors are doing a better job of judging a CEO’s success.
Compensation levels are all too often driven by short-term thinking.
* WHICH IS IN LARGE PART DELIBERATELY SPURRED BY OUR DYSFUNCTIONAL TAX CODE.
The CEOs of the 50 firms that laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home 42% more pay in 2009 than their peers did - largely because cutting workers boosts short-term profits and appeals to Wall Street. Yet a growing body of academic research suggests that downsizing doesn’t always lead to increased profitability over the longer haul, or even lower costs.
Management guru Peter Drucker once noted that after CEO-to-worker pay ratios went above 25–1, major moral questions started to be raised. It will be hard to make employees believe that “we’re all in this together” when it becomes clear in public documents that company leaders have largely insulated themselves from any financial risk.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/06/the_higher_education_bubble_ready_to_burst_107029.html
Government-subsidized loans have injected money into higher education, as they did into housing, causing prices to balloon. But at some point people figure out they're not getting their money's worth, and the bubble bursts.
Some think this would be a good thing.
* ME! ME! (*JUMPING UP AND DOWN*) (*WAVING BOTH ARMS*)
Charles Murray has called for the abolition of college for almost all students. Save it for genuine scholars, he says, and let others qualify for jobs by standardized national tests, as accountants already do.
(*WILD CHEERING*)
The National Center for Education Statistics found that most college graduates are below proficiency in verbal and quantitative literacy.
* AND THIS IS THE "PRODUCT" THAT OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES PUT OUT AT A COST OF TENS OF THOUSANDS - SOMETIMES HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS - OF DOLLARS PER GRADUATE...???
University of California scholars Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks report that students these days study an average of 14 hours a week, down from 24 hours in 1961.
The American Council of Alumni and Trustees concluded, after a survey of 714 colleges and universities, "by and large, higher education has abandoned a coherent content-rich general education curriculum." [Students] aren't taught the basics of literature, history or science. ACTA reports that most schools don't require a foreign language, hardly any require economics, American history and government "are badly neglected," and schools "have much to do" on math and science.
A century ago, only about 2% of American adults graduated from college; in 1910, the number of college graduates nationally was 39,755 - smaller than the student bodies at many campuses today.
Higher education expanded when the G.I. Bill financed veterans' education after World War II and then expanded further with postwar growth. Government's student loan subsidies have enabled institutions to grow faster over the last three decades than the economy on whose productivity they ultimately depend.
As often happens, success leads to excess. America leads the world in higher education, yet there is much in our colleges and universities that is amiss and, more to the point, suddenly not sustainable.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100905/D9I204T00.html
Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq's ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday.
The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.
(*SIGH*)
Under an agreement between the two countries, Iraq can still call on American forces to assist in combat...
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
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